And now he thought her a vampire. It was a wonder he was deigning to speak to her at all. Her hand tightened impossibly further. "What?"
A pause that hummed with things long unsaid. "Your mother's grave was violated last night."
Lijuan.An icy anger uncurled in Elena's gut. "Did they take her?"
"No." A curt word. "The perpetrator was disturbed in the process by a vampire who appears to belong to Raphael."
Her knees threatened to crumple as relief tumbled through her. Of course Raphael had put guards on her family's graves after the gift Lijuan had sent her. Bracing herself against the desk, she fought to keep her tone even. "Maybe it's time you followed Mama's wishes to have her body cremated and her ashes scattered on the winds."
"So I can fly,cherie."
That had been Marguerite's response when Elena had questioned her after overhearing her talking to Jeffrey about what she'd want him to do if she died before him.
"There'll be no need for it if you can keep your friends away from her." Each word was hard, designed to cut, to bruise.
Flinching, she said, "There's every need - but then, you've never known how to keep promises." She hung up before he could say anything else, her hand trembling as she lifted it to her mouth.
The door opened behind her the next instant, and she knew without turning that Raphael had come home for her. "They didn't touch her?"
"They didn't even get within touching distance of the headstone." Strong hands on her shoulders, pulling her back against a warm wall of a chest.
"My father made it sound like they'd dug her up." She closed her hands over his. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I heard in transit." A kiss pressed to her cheek. "I wanted to tell you in person - I didn't expect that Jeffrey would have the resources to find out so quickly."
"My father knows everyone there is to know." Both legal and not, though he'd slap her for implying the latter. "The one who tried to get to my mother's grave. Were your men able to catch him?"
"Yes." A quiet acknowledgment that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. "He was reborn."
She sucked in a breath. "He had enough of a mind to carry out the orders on his own?"
"It appears he was very newly reborn." Raphael slid his hands down her arms, then off, as he walked to open the balcony doors. "They do not speak, but Dmitri swears there was a plea for mercy in his eyes when he was caught."
"He wanted to live?"
"No." He held out a hand.
She took it and he led her out into the cool breeze of the balcony. They stood side by side, their wings touching in an intimacy she'd allow no one else. "Why didn't he run, commit suicide when he had the chance?"
"Lijuan has control over her puppets. I don't believe she has enough control to manipulate them over that distance, however, which makes me think she had someone else there whom Dmitri's men didn't find."
"Someone the reborn thought he had to follow." She blew out a breath, wondering what kind of an evil could scare the dead. "What did Dmitri do to him?"
"Gave him what he wanted."
Elena's hand clenched on the railing. "Good." She'd want that same mercy if she was ever turned into the horror of one of Lijuan's reawakened dead.
"Her games," Raphael said, "they're escalating. The act against your mother's grave came on my territory, violating our implicit agreement not to enter each other's lands without permission."
"Plausible deniability. She can always say she knew nothing about the actions of her underlings."
"We would all know it for a lie, but yes, she's far enough removed from the act to do so credibly." Raphael's wings spread, one sliding over her back in a quiet caress. "It's time for us to make our own move."
She glanced at him, saw the pitiless angle of his jaw, remembered that this was the archangel who'd executed another. "You've already made it."
His lips curved in a smile no mortal would ever want to see. "Lijuan shows signs of believing that her status as the oldest among us makes her untouchable."
"Could you kill her if necessary?"
"I'm not sure Lijuan can truly die." He said the terrifying words with quiet power. "It's possible she's lived so long, she's become the truest of immortals, straddling the line between life and death."
"Except," Elena said, feeling a ghost walk across her grave, "it looks like she prefers the dead over the living."
"Yes."
Chapter 27
"Fuck! " Illium dodged one knife, swiveled to find the tip of his opposite wing pinned to the wall. "Two knives is cheating!"
Something feral in Elena smiled in satisfaction - poor Illium was bearing the brunt of the turbulence incited by her father's call a day ago. "Strike one for the hunter."
The blue-winged angel reached over and pulled out the knife. Dropping to the earth, he handed it to her, hilt first. "Lucky hit."
"Sore loser."
"It was getting pathetic watching you fail."
"Look at that," she said with a mock gasp, "I think I nipped off a few feathers in the process. Poor, poor Bluebell."
He grinned, those golden eyes bright with mischief, with an ability to play that seemed to have been leached out of the other immortals. "Next time," he said, "I'm going to run you around so bad, they'll have to carry your whimpering body out of here."
Cleaning off the knife, she slid it back into her arm sheath before bringing her hand up to hide an exaggerated yawn.